Shawls - Cash - Beloved Bazaar - My experience

[Stewwy]

Being that I do not like to farm or have the time to do so I resigned myself to buying most of the items that I could. I thought I would give a summary of my path through the shawls to share with others. If anyone has specific questions they'd liek to ask please do so.

I literally bought everything that was buyable including the Royal Kromrif Blood.

I ran up the tradeskills as fast as I could regardless of cost.

Note I'm not bragging, but just had excess cash laying around from Jewelcraft sales and selling spells, etc.

Totals - skills totals in order that I ran them up
Jewelcraft - 247+trophy - 12 hours - 7k spent (well before I started shawls)
Brewing - 187 - 4 hours - <500pp spent
Baking - 191 - 4 hours - <500pp spent
Fletching - 173 - 4 hours - 2k spent
Pottery - 166 - 5 hours - <1k psent
Smithing - 179 - 8 hours - 15k spent
Tailoring - 181 - 8 hours - 25k spent

I did these from easiest to most difficult. And even though none of them took over a day (usually 4-5 hours), I did them over a 2 month period.

I did not collect a single item for the shawls until I finished Tailoring back on January 25th and then I started collecting items from the bazaar.

I did shawls 1-4 in the same day, and ended by collecting a single wurm bile. Total Time Spent - 6 hours (stupid snow Griffons) - total plat spent - 1k

1 day later I went back to the biles and got them all and then took a bunch of guildies twinks over a two night period to get the silks in Velks. Made the 5th shawl in the first shot. For you bile mongers out there. I got 3 biles inside the caves off 3 different kinds of wurms and 4 outside all off youngins. Yes I collcedted 7 biles. Total Time Spent - 12 hours; Total plat spent - 0k

Collected enough pieces of the 6th shawl to do three combines. Successful on the first try. 6 Wolf Whiskers - 5 hours. 6 Siren Hairs - 2 hours. Total plat spent - 0k

Bought every piece of the 7th shawl but the swordfish tooth. Got it on the second fish and made the shawl the same night. Total time spent - 1 hour. Total plat spent - 3.5k

8th Shawl - Made all the 8th shawl armor the same night that I finished the 7th shawl, thus leaving me only needing the gems from WL. 1-2 days later I DC'd A Wonded Frost Giant right outside the Geonid Caves and spent 10 hours straight clearing a few sections of the caves. I spent the last 5 hours needing a single sapphire and walked out with nearly an entire stack of extra emeralds and 10 extra diamonds. This was by far the worst part of the 8 quests for me.....well the most frustrating. I Faceted the gems and attached them to the armor as I looted the gems, so I walked out of WL ready to do my Thurg hand ins. Did the Dain hand ins the same night I collected the gems and my guild helped me to the escort that same night also. Total Time spent - 13 hours. Total plat spent - 8k

Total time spent farming for materials - 39 hours over a two week period from January 24th to February 6th. Total cash spent on shawl materials 1-8 - 12k.

Total Time runnnig up tradeskills = 45 hours
Total Plat spent on tradeskills = 51k
Total Time gathering Shawl materials = 39 hours
Total Plat spent on Shawl Materials = 12k

Is the 8th shawl worth 63k plat? It is to me. I'd have paid 100k for it without blinking an eye.

As an aside - with the skills above I did not fail on a single combine from the 5th shawl through the 8th. I got bit by the RNG and failed on a silk cord combine during my silk farming, but never failed again.

Lucky? Yes!
Broke? No.
Happy? YES!

Had a guildie tell me "I can't believe that you ran through the shawls that fast!" hehe

I hate quests but I wanted the shawl. I kinda like tradeskills now though. Weeeee!

Feel free to ask anything.

cheers!

[Carmaris]

Only question I have is, "What took you so long?"

Your total time spent is higher than what I spent doing my paladin's shawl--and that was back when I was very poor and had to farm everything myself (~14 hours alone for all the silks/crystalline silks I needed--this was pre-bazaar too, btw).

For my cleric, start to finish, took ~28 hours to tradeskill up and ~20 collecting drops for the shawls. Cash outlay was probably lower too, but this was before the upsurge in pricing (silks 5pp a piece back then, swatches 10pp...now I'm surprised if I see them for 15/30).

[cannyar]

wow. thanks for the interesting information. i have several skills that need to be raised a little yet, your list lets me know what to expect as far as cost and time.

the worst part for me is i've been farming biles for days. unfortunately i don't seem to be having any luck, inside the cave or south of it. i'm killing every wurm i can find (ancient, elder and young). lots of spells i can't use, more wurm meat i can shake a stick at. i found two, one failed the combine, one succeeded. i haven't seen one in probably 15 hours.

sigh. i guess i'll keep farming...

[Willain]

Originally posted by cannyar
the worst part for me is i've been farming biles for days.
...
sigh. i guess i'll keep farming...

I just finished my combines for the 8th, and need to do the hand ins and the walk. Farming biles and silk for the 5th by far took the longest for me. In contrast, the gems for the 8th went rather quickly, as I hit the caves after a patch, found a lot of shimmering geonids, and got all the gems I needed in about 1.5 hours.

I must confess to being impatient and buying velium, a few hound furs, the seashell, and kromriff blood... On Xev the blood and seashell run several thousand a piece.

[Stewwy]

The biles took me so long because I had massive competition.

Snow Griffs took me so long because of massive competition.

The silks in Velks tok so long because I did it PLing my wifes shaman and some friends lowbie toons while we did it. It would have gone much faster with a DC pet with scarecrow and mage weapons. And everybody and their mother seemed to be in Velks those two days.

Had major competition with the whiskers also - there wasn't a wolf to be found when I was colecting them. By contrast I had no competition on the sirens and got 6 hairs in less than two hours.

Gems - had no compeition but got very very very unlucky with my last sapphire. Took me 5+ hours and dozens of Geonids to get my last sapphire.

ALOT of people do shawls these days and high level people can keep certain types of spawns totally clean. Most of my time that involved farming no drop items was wrapped up in competition.

As for my time estimates to run up the tradeskills - the number is biased by running up JC to GM. Also I did a few of these tradeskills a while ago so my time estimates might be exxaggerated basedo n FEELING they took longer than they did. Pottery and the dreaded ceramic linging - Brewing and the drared Carpal Tunnel - Tailoring and the dreaded Kioloa's. All of these make time SEEM longer. hehe

[cannyar]

well i'm the only one who seems interested in the wurms the past 2 weeks. i can't kill them all quick enough by myself before they are respawning. as long as i have kei i can keep running the loop killing the fresh pops right after the last of the previous cycle and manage to keep pretty steady flow of mana with meditation and modrods (i'm a mage).

still no biles though. :-(

i haven't seen the glow either, then again i haven't found any biles. dynamic lighting is on.

it does say on allahkazam that only young, elder and ancident drop biles. not guardian, crystalline or other types. can anyone confirm (or deny) this for sure? i've only been killing those three. i've also said it is more common on young (which are all over the SW corner of the zone).

[Abazagaroth]

Fairly common on random ones by the plane of mischief zone in area, and in the hills between it and velks. If you are killing inside the caves, don't bother. They may drop there, but if so, are massively rare. Just kill the easy ones on the outside, and the glow is definitely noticeable. Took me about 5 hours I think to get all 4, and I know several other people that it took a similar time to get.

[Prexis]

Done the shawl numerous times. Can say I never saw a bile drop from either guardians or crystalline. Always did seem to be most common south of the cave near the river. Believe the fastest shawl I did took me 2 weeks, and net cost was around 5k to raise all the skills. But I made a ton of extra viscous mana and sold in bazaar to make back most of the money.